“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Various aspects of the personality exist whether or not you are aware of their existence. When you do become aware of their existence, your awareness in no way negates their independence. You simply expand psychically. Portions of the self live a more or less independent existence, both while the dominant personality sleeps and is awake.

Our material on the nature of action will be helpful here. The ego, the physically-oriented ego, is a convenient figurehead. It represents only an imperfect glimpse of a given momentary appearance—the portion of the self that happens in any given instant to show itself.

You do not know the self as it is within physical existence, and until you do you cannot hope to know what survives physical death, or what part of you is awake while the ego sleeps. When I refer to the ego I do so for simplicity’s sake, since the term has meaning to you. There are obviously portions of the self that never operate directly within physical reality.

Consider this analogy: The self as a moving circle, such as a Ferris wheel. A tree in front of the wheel will represent physical reality. The whole self, or the whole wheel, is composed of many selves in various positions, as the many people who sit on the Ferris wheel. As the wheel turns you call the person or the self who faces the tree the ego, simply because this is the portion that faces physical reality, represented by our tree. But the self who faces the tree one moment is not the self that faces it the next moment, and the operator of the wheel is never in evidence, you see.

Perhaps if you imagine a spotlight directed on the seat in front of the tree, you will see this more clearly. You cannot see the other selves on the wheel, you only see the one spot that is lit, and the light is that of physical perception. There are different lights, however. If others watched and saw only that portion of the self that was clear in their perspective, then they would imagine that they saw the primary self also.

The inner ego is the self who drives the wheel with purpose; at the same time there are many other wheels and many spokes… Our moment point analogy will also help you here. The sleeping self will of course be considered the primary self from the standpoint of its own reality. I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that all of these portions are self-conscious. They may not be conscious of the other selves however. The inner senses connect all the selves, and the movements of consciousness are far more complicated than that of a Ferris wheel.

You are receiving instructions, you see, now in physical reality. You are also receiving instructions in other realities. You are not aware of these consciously. Certain portions of your personalities are learning, within their own perspective, to venture into physical reality, as you are learning to venture into nonphysical reality.

Certain portions that deal rather directly with the manipulation of psychic energy are being instructed also. All of this is more complicated than it would seem, and yet extremely simple when the basic principles are understood.

However, the personality as it is manifested can never be understood if it is taken alone. There are sufficient hints and signs that do appear, to give evidence of these other portions of the self. Now there is one important point in particular in all this that should be emphasized, and I will repeat it: Certain portions of the self do not manifest themselves directly within physical reality. They do not operate directly within physical reality, and the word directly is significant.